Books

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Cooking Emergency

Many people I know -- including Avo, Dori, my dad, and my brother -- find cooking relaxing. It's the perfect antidote to a long, stressful day at work (or in my dad's case, a long, relaxing day of horseback riding and dog walking).

Me? I almost had a nervous breakdown yesterday trying to make broccoli soup. I am not exaggerating. Let me explain.

I was halfway through Giulia Melucci's recipe for Broccoli soup when I realized I hadn't yet added the 1/4 cup of cream required. I scanned the directions, but didn't see anything specified about when to add the cream.

1. Melt the butter in a large heavy pan over medium heat, add the onion and carrot and salt. Saute until soft, about five minutes.

2. Add the broccoli, stir to coat, then add the chicken broth and cumin. Raise the heat to medium high, bring to a simmer, return heat to medium and cook until broccoli is very soft, about 15-20 minutes.

3. Puree the soup in a food processor, or with an immersion blender. (My preferred method, so much easier than transferring to a machine, if you don't have one, you should.) You might want to add another tablespoon of butter here for a richer soup--that's not where I'm at today but I think it's a good move. Add lime juice and a few grindings of pepper and your virtuous meal or first course is ready.

Perhaps a cooking pro would innately know when to add the cream, but I'm still a novice. Panicked, I e-mailed Giulia, whom I met recently after stalking her on Facebook. My broccoli was already pretty soft and I was ready for step 3, but I didn't want to proceed without the cream. What to do?

Things were rough going before they took a turn for the worse. I realized with horror that the cream leftover in the fridge from when I made my parents chocolate mousse a week and a half ago had curdled. I'll spare you the description, but it was not a pretty sight.

I hurried out in the rain and stopped at several bodegas before finding one with cream. Would Half and Half do? I wondered.

Still, no word back from Giulia, so I made a move and dumped in 1/4 cup of cream.

The next challenge was transferring the soup into the food processor since -- no surprise here -- I don't have an immersion blender. In fact, I don't even know what an immersion blender is. It sounds like some sort of SCUBA gear to me.

I poured the entire pan full of soup into the food processor before noticing that the soup was seeping out onto my kitchen counter.

By this point, I was dripping sweat into the soup. Taking a deep cleansing breath, I mopped up the mess and managed to salvage some of the soup. Good thing I moved my laptop off the kitchen counter before this step!

I tried the soup and it's pretty tasty (I didn't add lime to it). But I'm not sure it was worth all of that stress. And I realize now that Avo is probably sick of broccoli dishes -- especially since I just made orecchiette and broccoli with walnuts yet again!

Maybe one day I'll find cooking relaxing. But for now, I'll stick with Tension Tamer tea.

Update: I heard back from Giulia who was baffled by my message. "What cream? I didn't say to add cream, did?" Apparently, she made the soup with cream last week, but this week, she cut the cream and added lime. All that stressing for nothing! Well, not nothing -- I have the soup to show for my efforts, and it IS nice and creamy. I'm just pleased that I knew better than to add the lime to the cream. "You've got natural instinct," said Giulia. Well, I'm getting there.

5 comments:

It's Me, Mom - Oh, Honey, I sympathize with you. I wish I had been around to help although I don't think I would have known about the cream either. I don't think I've ever made a creamed soup. (You do know about cholesterol, don't you?) I bet the soup would be good with carrots. I would probably grate them. I can imagine that, except for Ruby, you're all tired of brocolli. I'm sure Jesse never even tasted the soup.

So here's the thing. I know how to cook; I've been cooking alone in the kitchen since I was 8 years old. But sometimes (more often then I'd like to admit) my kids get mac-n-cheese, and my own, home made, chicken man-n-cheese. Anyway, I'm proud of your progress, and impressed that you are keeping it up!

Hop over to my blog if you want to see another unhealthy food that I recently made for my kids!